Story of family, sisterhood breaks hearts
Lynn Bonney, Special to The Gazette
Thursday, September 3, 2009
“Shanghai Girls” by Lisa See, Random House, 2009, $25.
By Lynn Bonney
Special to The Gazette
Lisa See’s fiction writing gently and compellingly teaches an important lesson: There are no insurmountable borders between past and present, between one culture and another.
In “Snow Flower and the Secret Fan” and “Peony in Love,” See took readers to long-ago China, exploring the bonds that tie people to one another despite hardships. Her newest novel, “Shanghai Girls,” moves to a much more recent era, a time of clashing personal values in a world reshaped by war and revolution.
Pearl Chin and her younger sister, May, share a traditional home, but their nights find them in the city’s club scene. The sisters serve as “Beautiful Girls,” modeling for paintings that sell everything from soap to cigarettes, as well as illustrations for calendars that bring a touch of glamour to the city’s poor neighborhoods. (Note: Examples of Beautiful Girls artwork can be found online. Be sure to include a word such as “vintage” or a date such as “1930s” or the search may bring up a slew of undesired results.)
Their carefree world crashes to an end on the day that they learn that their father’s prosperous rickshaw business has collapsed. To satisfy his debts, he has arranged for his daughters’ marriages — he has, in effect, sold Pearl and May to Chinese men now living in California.
Before the girls can leave to join the husbands they barely know, Japan begins bombing their homeland. With their mother, Pearl and May flee to the country. Their exodus slowed because their mother struggles to travel on her bound feet, the family must face the invaders’ brutality before the sisters manage to board the ship that takes them to California.
Awaiting them is a long detention at Angel Island, the Ellis Island of the West Coast. Other Chinese detainees share advice on passing panels of questioners whose mission seems to be to raise as many barriers as possible to the newcomers’ hopes and plans.
In their new country, Pearl and May continue to meet obstacles. They try to learn to love their new husbands and meet the constant demands of a strict patriarchal household. As mother and aunt, they fiercely love Joy, a Chinese girl whose American ways both delight and mystify them.
See continues to be a remarkable storyteller. Readers cannot help but be enthralled as Pearl and May find work as extras in the booming movie business, working as faceless Chinese extras and costume consultants. The development of Chinatown as a kind of Disneyland ghetto is based on period histories.
See draws from a variety of resources to tell of Pearl and May’s family situations, their painful experiences at Angel Island, the terrors of being haunted by FBI agents who suspiciously probe every link to China after the communist takeover of their homeland.
“Shanghai Girls” is, at its heart, a story of family, of sisterhood — a story that transcends cultural differences to engage and involve readers, to surprise and to break hearts. See leaves open the possibility of a sequel and there is certainly more to learn about the unforgettable Shanghai girls.
• Emporia Public Library staff and volunteers write “On the Shelf.”